Introduction

Okay, show of hands: Who out there doesn't like free games? Nobody? We thought so.

When it comes to mobile apps, free is where most of the action is. Gartner, Inc., a leading IT-research firm, projected late in 2012 that 89 percent of all mobile-app-store downloads in 2012 would be of free titles. Users of Android tablets and phones are a big driver of that trend—the abundance of freebies for the platform has helped move Google's OS neck-and-neck with Apple's iOS (the operating system on iPhones and iPads) in the race for mobile-OS supremacy.

Apple recently cited that more than 60 percent of its App Store apps are freebies, so good free offerings were practically a prerequisite for Android to succeed. (See our Top 50 Best Free Games for the iPad.) And the beachhead, as it so often is in tech, was gaming. As titles like the Angry Birds family have shown, there's no better way to get users logging loads of hours on your platform than with free, addictive games. Of course, plenty of the best and most popular free Android games are carryovers from the Apple world, or have equivalents there. But others achieved their breakouts on the Android platform first.

If you’re an Android user, you know the Google Play store, which is bursting with free titles worth checking out (as well as plenty that aren’t, too). Many of the popular free titles on Google Play are designed for both Android smartphones and tablets, and some of the games benefit from the larger screen size of tablets. (Some show their graphics in greater detail on a larger screen, while others are able to show a larger portion of the board or playing field.) Conversely, some games don’t scale up on big tablets particularly well (especially 10-inchers).

That’s where Apple’s strict curation of the apps in its App Store trumps Google’s more laissez-faire attitude toward the apps in Play. Google Play’s less consistent tablet-game quality notwithstanding, Android still makes for a fun gaming platform on tablets. Our guide will help keep you from wasting time with subpar freebies.

The Best Free Android Games: There’s Free, and Then There’s Freer

In the case of this roundup, we looked at a few types of “free.” Many games on the Android platform are simply ad-supported. A portion of the screen might be a banner ad; alternatively, ad windows might pop up between game sessions. Often, those intrusions are the economics of how you’re getting the game for free.

Other forms include "freemium" games: free-to-play games that have a full, or mostly full, version of the game in the app, but that tempt you to purchase tokens (to extend your play sessions) or purchase goods or power-ups (to make the game easier or more fun). Demo versions are another kind of freebie: We looked at only a few of these, in which a short or trial version of the game entices you to pay for the full version. In many cases, the full version is inexpensive, but the trial version gives you an idea whether it’s worth dropping even that modest coin.

One thing to note: While the 50 games here were free when we selected them, sometimes an app’s status changes. A game may start as a free app in the Google Play store for an introductory period, but the publisher may charge down the road for future downloaders. Other games start out for-pay, then become free when the publisher develops other ways to profit—such as a big enough audience to make in-game ads viable money-makers. Also know that, sometimes, a publisher’s business model for an app is different on different platforms. It’s not unusual to see a popular game that’s for-pay on Apple’s App Store free on Google Play, or vice versa. The takeaway: You can’t assume that a free iOS favorite is also free on Android, though there’s a good chance it is.

We’ve broken our 50 top-app picks into nine categories on the pages to follow. Think we missed any essentials, or have a top free fave of your own that we missed? Share your thoughts in the comments below.